I’ve always been a bookworm and loved good fiction. As a child, when I finished a wonderful novel, I would hold it and not move, just absorb for long minutes afterward. I felt gratitude and wonder and knew I wanted to someday return the favor of transporting readers to another person’s interesting world. I loved finding meaning and truths in stories, and I liked learning what the characters did, what happened next.

Mostly at home, with my feet on an old, scarred roll-top desk. I’m someone who never learned to type properly, but I can hunt and peck as fast as many people who did take the right class in high school. Everything I’ve written has been on one little laptop or another—I’ve never owned a desktop computer. When I’m rewriting, working on a hard copy, I can be anywhere. I might go into town with a manuscript and have coffee or a glass of wine or a slice of pizza while I slash and scribble.

My approach is pretty organic. Different ideas will capture my imagination and ask if they can be in a story. Sometimes they fit together and sometimes they don’t. One notion leads to another and I might write pages that will have to go away later, but I’m sketching, getting to know a character, how she or he speaks or lives, so I just let it flow. Things start to click. I don’t outline before starting, nor do I write one chapter at a time or even in chronological order. If I’m thinking about a scene, conversation, or event that will come later, I page down and write away.

One day when I was in high school, the entire student body was sent to a church to attend the funeral of a recent graduate. I didn’t know her or even know of her. I was standing in the back of a huge, packed church when a young woman was called to speak. She managed two words—my sister—before she crumpled up crying. Seeing this survivor so bereft rocked me, and the tragedy cut deeper when I learned that her sister had been murdered. I still tear up at the memory of her raw pain in front of that altar.Life took me to interesting places and interesting careers. I worked as a fire department paramedic and later became a police officer, routinely encountering situations like domestic violence, going undercover to buy crack cocaine, and chatting with children about their sex lives with their dads. People tried to kill me and I was prepared to use force. I made arrests, served search warrants, cooled down countless squabbles and handled a lot of traffic accidents. Every day presented scenarios of people not at their best. But sometimes people were at their best. Sometimes, someone stepped up and gave aid or information that was life-changing for a stranger.People and the choices they make captivate me. The novel is from my imagination, although different ideas sparked various parts of the story. A friend called one day because she found calypso orchids in her woods and I thought about what this rare, wild orchid could represent. I saw a woman roofer one day, slinging shingles along with the guys. My husband and I pulled the car over one day because a little girl was bawling horribly at the edge of a vehicle turnout. I asked the man and woman some distance away if everything was okay and they said they weren’t with her and they had no idea what her problem was. Getting that child home to her parents was the only choice for me.

On some level, we certainly ought to help others, but the reasonable extent of our intervention can fluctuate with the scenario and personal factors. There are regular news reports of bystander syndrome and some of these are shocking, but it can feel a bit too pointed if we Monday-morning quarterback an event and remark on what others could have done differently. If the story had begun with chapter two and readers put themselves in the park, many would not have intervened. Obviously, I wanted to write about someone who was driven to take one step and then another to render assistance, going as far as it took to solve the problem.

Not surprisingly, I can identify with a woman making it in a physical and male-dominated career while keeping her femininity. I like out-of-the-box thinking and choices. But Daphne needed a reason to intervene in the coming scenario so her career choice wasn’t random. It was rooted in her reaction to personal tragedies. No spoilers here but readers often comment on chapter one and its end.

Dear Friends,People ask me a lot of questions about writing in general, the writing life and business, my process, and me.Now and again, I’ll respond with a writing tip or truism about this kind of life, or a fact-let about me. And for those of you not-yet-published, perhaps calling yourselves aspiring writers, look: you write, you’re a writer. Welcome. Welcome to the fold.Warmly, Lisa

Are You a Writer?

Q: How do you get a great website?A: Sleep with your webmaster. (Remember, some advice is general, some is specific. Or personal. In this case, I’m letting you know what works for me).

The Writer’s Website

When Orchids and Stone debuted, the local news paper asked what I was working on at the time and how it was going. Well, I was deep into rewriting The Measure of the Moon, and I shared my desire to cut at least ten thousand words out of the novel. The reporter was surprised; I was determined.And then I cut ten inches of my hair off and shipped it to Locks of Love. (They require donated hair to be uncolored, and of course, not gray. I’ve a touch of gray at my temples. Once the gray gets into the length, I will no longer be able to do an every-five-years donation to this worthy cause.)Here’s the thing: You’ve grown this story and you’re attached to it, but you must be brave enough to cut it. Make every word work when revising your manuscript.Don’t be afraid to cut it.

Cut It

Listen to It

In revising your writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, it is crucial to hear it. Read it aloud, but also, let it be read to you. There are good inexpensive (I use Natural Reader) and even free programs that will let your computer read a text document to you.In addition to catching some startlingly obvious errors, you’ll hear repetitions that you didn’t see, you’ll notice if the meter of two different characters’ speech is too similar, and more. The time spent listening to your work being read out loud—yes, the entire novel—is worthwhile, so don’t skip this step.

It’s nonfiction—neuroscience and physiology, current events (including biographies and memoires), and a lot of soft science exploring how the mind works and why people do the things they do.

1. If we snooped on your Kindle or your nightstand, what guilty pleasure might we find?

Where the Red Fern Grows—I didn’t get library privileges until I was eight.

2. What's the first book you remember not wanting to put down?

The Book Thief, because it will open minds and doors.

3. What book would you thrust into the hands of every 13-year-old in the country?

A horse trainer. I never grew out of the horse thing.

4. What did you dream of becoming as a child?

War and Peace, destined to be my big winter read, so I’ll have a different answer next year.

5. What classic do you feel embarrassed for never having read?

Antarctica. I’ve been on every other continent.

6. Name somewhere you’ve read about and longed to go.

I have to take care of the critters. I’d like to ride, but can write if I just feed my horses and make sure they’re fine. My dog is a Malinois, so must be temporarily decommissioned with mental and physical work before peace reigns.

7. What do you need to have or to do before you write?

It could be contemporary or young adult or historical. They all have their appeal and I read them all.

8. If you were forced to write in another genre, which would you pick and why?

I burst out of the house for a run or a ride or both. Also, I buy a pair of bright, short, wool running socks.

9. How do you celebrate the completion of a book you’ve written?

Swimming 1-2 miles, as I’m working on a story in which a young woman swims open water. I’ve a nearby salt water bay to swim across, and the novel’s character must save herself with an open salt water swim.

10. Confess your current obsession.

My friend Jo-Ann recommended Joyce Weatherford’s Heart of the Beast, which I had to scrounge around for. It’s wonderful and did not get the attention it deserved.

11. Is there an author or book series that you love, but no one else seems to know about?

Suzanne, crooned by Leonard Cohen; notions of the lyrics are embedded in Orchids and Stone.

Dorothea Brooke, with no apologies to those who decry some of her choices. She was intelligent and spirited and genuinely wanted to help those less fortunate. Ultimately, she marries for love. And she rides.

13. If you could be any literary character for a day, who would you be and why?

Bill Bryson, whose nonfiction is smart and funny and diverse.

14. If you could only read one author for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?

When I was a cop, I used to check occasionally to ensure I was still fairly anonymous. (Women in my family tend to marry guys with surnames like Johnson, Jones, and Smith; you’d think we’re going for Witness Protection-type disappearing.) Trail races and endurance rides that I enter now publicly post results, so after I became a full-time writer, I bowed to the reach of the Internet, and I enjoy connecting when readers reach out to me.

15. Do you Google yourself? Find anything interesting?

I’ll go kidnap baby Hitler and rehome him, maybe to a nice family with a cattle station in remote Australia, where he can work hard and not try to conquer the world with prejudice. Then I’ll be off to grab another little future despot.

16. You have a time machine. What’s your first stop?

My ashes will be flung from a favorite trail, but if I had a stone it would express gratitude. I’ve been able to lead a positive life, genuinely caring for others.

17. What would you like your epitaph to read?

If people would stop trying to choose for others, it might fix everything else. I recall the late Christopher Hitchens’s comment that there is a cure for poverty (and it seems if we cure poverty, we stop hunger), but I thought his cure (birth control) was incomplete because there are still constructs in many societies and sub-cultures in which one person inappropriately subordinates another, which results in poverty and unnecessary conflict.

18. You have the power to instantly fix one problem in the world. What do you do?

This was a pretty sweet interview. That said, it always works to ask me to go get a cup of coffee or get out on the trails, either on a good horse or in my running shoes, and talk about our favorite books

I’ve always been a bookworm and loved good fiction. As a child, when I finished a wonderful novel, I would hold it and not move, just absorb for long minutes afterward. I felt gratitude and wonder and knew I wanted to someday return the favor of transporting readers to another person’s interesting world. I loved finding meaning and truths in stories, and I liked learning what the characters did, what happened next.

Mostly at home, with my feet on an old, scarred roll-top desk. I’m someone who never learned to type properly, but I can hunt and peck as fast as many people who did take the right class in high school. Everything I’ve written has been on one little laptop or another—I’ve never owned a desktop computer. When I’m rewriting, working on a hard copy, I can be anywhere. I might go into town with a manuscript and have coffee or a glass of wine or a slice of pizza while I slash and scribble.

My approach is pretty organic. Different ideas will capture my imagination and ask if they can be in a story. Sometimes they fit together and sometimes they don’t. One notion leads to another and I might write pages that will have to go away later, but I’m sketching, getting to know a character, how she or he speaks or lives, so I just let it flow. Things start to click. I don’t outline before starting, nor do I write one chapter at a time or even in chronological order. If I’m thinking about a scene, conversation, or event that will come later, I page down and write away.

One day when I was in high school, the entire student body was sent to a church to attend the funeral of a recent graduate. I didn’t know her or even know of her. I was standing in the back of a huge, packed church when a young woman was called to speak. She managed two words—my sister—before she crumpled up crying. Seeing this survivor so bereft rocked me, and the tragedy cut deeper when I learned that her sister had been murdered. I still tear up at the memory of her raw pain in front of that altar.Life took me to interesting places and interesting careers. I worked as a fire department paramedic and later became a police officer, routinely encountering situations like domestic violence, going undercover to buy crack cocaine, and chatting with children about their sex lives with their dads. People tried to kill me and I was prepared to use force. I made arrests, served search warrants, cooled down countless squabbles and handled a lot of traffic accidents. Every day presented scenarios of people not at their best. But sometimes people were at their best. Sometimes, someone stepped up and gave aid or information that was life-changing for a stranger.People and the choices they make captivate me. The novel is from my imagination, although different ideas sparked various parts of the story. A friend called one day because she found calypso orchids in her woods and I thought about what this rare, wild orchid could represent. I saw a woman roofer one day, slinging shingles along with the guys. My husband and I pulled the car over one day because a little girl was bawling horribly at the edge of a vehicle turnout. I asked the man and woman some distance away if everything was okay and they said they weren’t with her and they had no idea what her problem was. Getting that child home to her parents was the only choice for me.

On some level, we certainly ought to help others, but the reasonable extent of our intervention can fluctuate with the scenario and personal factors. There are regular news reports of bystander syndrome and some of these are shocking, but it can feel a bit too pointed if we Monday-morning quarterback an event and remark on what others could have done differently. If the story had begun with chapter two and readers put themselves in the park, many would not have intervened. Obviously, I wanted to write about someone who was driven to take one step and then another to render assistance, going as far as it took to solve the problem.

Not surprisingly, I can identify with a woman making it in a physical and male-dominated career while keeping her femininity. I like out-of-the-box thinking and choices. But Daphne needed a reason to intervene in the coming scenario so her career choice wasn’t random. It was rooted in her reaction to personal tragedies. No spoilers here but readers often comment on chapter one and its end.

Dear Friends,People ask me a lot of questions about writing in general, the writing life and business, my process, and me.Now and again, I’ll respond with a writing tip or truism about this kind of life, or a fact-let about me. And for those of you not-yet-published, perhaps calling yourselves aspiring writers, look: you write, you’re a writer. Welcome. Welcome to the fold.Warmly, Lisa

Are You a Writer?

Q: How do you get a great website?A: Sleep with your webmaster. (Remember, some advice is general, some is specific. Or personal. In this case, I’m letting you know what works for me).

The Writer’s Website

When Orchids and Stone debuted, I was interviewed for the local paper and was asked what I was working on at the time and how it was going. Well, I was deep into rewriting The Measure of the Moon, and I shared my desire to cut at least ten thousand words out of the novel. The reporter was surprised; I was determined.And then I cut ten inches of my hair off and shipped it to Locks of Love. (They require donated hair to be uncolored, and of course, not gray. I’ve a touch of gray at my temples. Once the gray gets into the length, I will no longer be able to do an every-five-years donation to this worthy cause.)Here’s the thing: You’ve grown this story and you’re attached to it, but you must be brave enough to cut it. Make every word work when revising your manuscript.Don’t be afraid to cut it.

Cut It

Listen to It

In revising your writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, it is crucial to hear it. Read it aloud, but also, let it be read to you. There are good inexpensive and even free programs (I use Natural Reader) that will let your computer read a text document to you. In addition to catching some startlingly obvious errors, you’ll hear repetition that you didn’t see, you’ll notice if the meter of two different characters’ speech is too similar and more. The time spent listening to your work being read out loud—yes, the entire novel—is worthwhile, so don’t skip this step.

It’s nonfiction—neuroscience and physiology, current events (including biographies and memoires), and a lot of soft science exploring how the mind works and why people do the things they do.

1. If we snooped on your Kindle or your nightstand, what guilty pleasure might we find?

Where the Red Fern Grows—I didn’t get library privileges until I was eight.

2. What's the first book you remember not wanting to put down?

The Book Thief, because it will open minds and doors.

3. What book would you thrust into the hands of every 13-year-old in the country?

A horse trainer. I never grew out of the horse thing.

4. What did you dream of becoming as a child?

War and Peace, destined to be my big winter read, so I’ll have a different answer next year.

5. What classic do you feel embarrassed for never having read?

Antarctica. I’ve been on every other continent.

6. Name somewhere you’ve read about and longed to go.

I have to take care of the critters. I’d like to ride, but can write if I just feed my horses and make sure they’re fine. My dog is a Malinois, so must be temporarily decommissioned with mental and physical work before peace reigns.

7. What do you need to have or to do before you write?

It could be contemporary or young adult or historical. They all have their appeal and I read them all.

8. If you were forced to write in another genre, which would you pick and why?

I burst out of the house for a run or a ride or both. Also, I buy a pair of bright, short, wool running socks.

9. How do you celebrate the completion of a book you’ve written?

Swimming 1-2 miles, as I’m working on a story in which a young woman swims open water. I’ve a nearby salt water bay to swim across, and the novel’s character must save herself with an open salt water swim.

10. Confess your current obsession.

My friend Jo-Ann recommended Joyce Weatherford’s Heart of the Beast, which I had to scrounge around for. It’s wonderful and did not get the attention it deserved.

11. Is there an author or book series that you love, but no one else seems to know about?

Suzanne, crooned by Leonard Cohen; notions of the lyrics are embedded in Orchids and Stone

12. If your latest book had a soundtrack, what would be the first song on it?

Dorothea Brooke, with no apologies to those who decry some of her choices. She was intelligent and spirited and genuinely wanted to help those less fortunate. Ultimately, she marries for love. And she rides.

13. If you could be any literary character for a day, who would you be and why?

Bill Bryson, whose nonfiction is smart and funny and diverse.

14. If you could only read one author for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?

When I was a cop, I used to check occasionally to ensure I was still fairly anonymous. (Women in my family tend to marry guys with surnames like Johnson, Jones, and Smith; you’d think we’re going for Witness Protection-type disappearing.) Trail races and endurance rides that I enter now publicly post results, so after I became a full-time writer, I bowed to the reach of the Internet, and I enjoy connecting when readers reach out to me.

15. Do you Google yourself? Find anything interesting?

I’ll go kidnap baby Hitler and rehome him, maybe to a nice family with a cattle station in remote Australia, where he can work hard and not try to conquer the world with prejudice. Then I’ll be off to grab another little future despot.

16. You have a time machine. What’s your first stop?

My ashes will be flung from a favorite trail, but if I had a stone it would express gratitude. I’ve been able to lead a positive life, genuinely caring for others.

17. What would you like your epitaph to read?

If people would stop trying to choose for others, it might fix everything else. I recall the late Christopher Hitchens’s comment that there is a cure for poverty (and it seems if we cure poverty, we stop hunger), but I thought his cure (birth control) was incomplete because there are still constructs in many societies and sub-cultures in which one person inappropriately subordinates another, which results in poverty and unnecessary conflict.

18. You have the power to instantly fix one problem in the world. What do you do?

This was a pretty sweet interview. That said, it always works to ask me to go get a cup of coffee or get out on the trails, either on a good horse or in my running shoes, and talk about our favorite books

I’ve always been a bookworm and loved good fiction. As a child, when I finished a wonderful novel, I would hold it and not move, just absorb for long minutes afterward. I felt gratitude and wonder and knew I wanted to someday return the favor of transporting readers to another person’s interesting world. I loved finding meaning and truths in stories, and I liked learning what the characters did, what happened next.

Mostly at home, with my feet on an old, scarred roll-top desk. I’m someone who never learned to type properly, but I can hunt and peck as fast as many people who did take the right class in high school. Everything I’ve written has been on one little laptop or another—I’ve never owned a desktop computer. When I’m rewriting, working on a hard copy, I can be anywhere. I might go into town with a manuscript and have coffee or a glass of wine or a slice of pizza while I slash and scribble.

My approach is pretty organic. Different ideas will capture my imagination and ask if they can be in a story. Sometimes they fit together and sometimes they don’t. One notion leads to another and I might write pages that will have to go away later, but I’m sketching, getting to know a character, how she or he speaks or lives, so I just let it flow. Things start to click. I don’t outline before starting, nor do I write one chapter at a time or even in chronological order. If I’m thinking about a scene, conversation, or event that will come later, I page down and write away.

One day when I was in high school, the entire student body was sent to a church to attend the funeral of a recent graduate. I didn’t know her or even know of her. I was standing in the back of a huge, packed church when a young woman was called to speak. She managed two words—my sister—before she crumpled up crying. Seeing this survivor so bereft rocked me, and the tragedy cut deeper when I learned that her sister had been murdered. I still tear up at the memory of her raw pain in front of that altar.Life took me to interesting places and interesting careers. I worked as a fire department paramedic and later became a police officer, routinely encountering situations like domestic violence, going undercover to buy crack cocaine, and chatting with children about their sex lives with their dads. People tried to kill me and I was prepared to use force. I made arrests, served search warrants, cooled down countless squabbles and handled a lot of traffic accidents. Every day presented scenarios of people not at their best. But sometimes people were at their best. Sometimes, someone stepped up and gave aid or information that was life-changing for a stranger.People and the choices they make captivate me. The novel is from my imagination, although different ideas sparked various parts of the story. A friend called one day because she found calypso orchids in her woods and I thought about what this rare, wild orchid could represent. I saw a woman roofer one day, slinging shingles along with the guys. My husband and I pulled the car over one day because a little girl was bawling horribly at the edge of a vehicle turnout. I asked the man and woman some distance away if everything was okay and they said they weren’t with her and they had no idea what her problem was. Getting that child home to her parents was the only choice for me.

On some level, we certainly ought to help others, but the reasonable extent of our intervention can fluctuate with the scenario and personal factors. There are regular news reports of bystander syndrome and some of these are shocking, but it can feel a bit too pointed if we Monday-morning quarterback an event and remark on what others could have done differently. If the story had begun with chapter two and readers put themselves in the park, many would not have intervened. Obviously, I wanted to write about someone who was driven to take one step and then another to render assistance, going as far as it took to solve the problem.

Not surprisingly, I can identify with a woman making it in a physical and male-dominated career while keeping her femininity. I like out-of-the-box thinking and choices. But Daphne needed a reason to intervene in the coming scenario so her career choice wasn’t random. It was rooted in her reaction to personal tragedies. No spoilers here but readers often comment on chapter one and its end.

Q: How do you get a great website?A: Sleep with your webmaster. (Remember, some advice is general, some is specific. Or personal. In this case, I’m letting you know what works for me).

The Writer’s Website

When Orchids and Stone debuted, I was interviewed for the local paper and was asked what I was working on at the time and how it was going. Well, I was deep into rewriting The Measure of the Moon, and I shared my desire to cut at least ten thousand words out of the novel. The reporter was surprised; I was determined.And then I cut ten inches of my hair off and shipped it to Locks of Love. (They require donated hair to be uncolored, and of course, not gray. I’ve a touch of gray at my temples. Once the gray gets into the length, I will no longer be able to do an every-five-years donation to this worthy cause.)Here’s the thing: You’ve grown this story and you’re attached to it, but you must be brave enough to cut it. Make every word work when revising your manuscript.Don’t be afraid to cut it.

Cut It

Listen to It

In revising your writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, it is crucial to hear it. Read it aloud, but also, let it be read to you. There are good inexpensive and even free programs (I use Natural Reader) that will let your computer read a text document to you. In addition to catching some startlingly obvious errors, you’ll hear repetition that you didn’t see, you’ll notice if the meter of two different characters’ speech is too similar and more. The time spent listening to your work being read out loud—yes, the entire novel—is worthwhile, so don’t skip this step

It’s nonfiction—neuroscience and physiology, current events (including biographies and memoires), and a lot of soft science exploring how the mind works and why people do the things they do.

1. If we snooped on your Kindle or your nightstand, what guilty pleasure might we find?

Where the Red Fern Grows—I didn’t get library privileges until I was eight.

2. What's the first book you remember not wanting to put down?

The Book Thief, because it will open minds and doors.

3. What book would you thrust into the hands of every 13-year-old in the country?

A horse trainer. I never grew out of the horse thing.

4. What did you dream of becoming as a child?

War and Peace, destined to be my big winter read, so I’ll have a different answer next year.

5. What classic do you feel embarrassed for never having read?

Antarctica. I’ve been on every other continent.

6. Name somewhere you’ve read about and longed to go.

I have to take care of the critters. I’d like to ride, but can write if I just feed my horses and make sure they’re fine. My dog is a Malinois, so must be temporarily decommissioned with mental and physical work before peace reigns.

7. What do you need to have or to do before you write?

It could be contemporary or young adult or historical. They all have their appeal and I read them all.

8. If you were forced to write in another genre, which would you pick and why?

I burst out of the house for a run or a ride or both. Also, I buy a pair of bright, short, wool running socks.

9. How do you celebrate the completion of a book you’ve written?

Swimming 1-2 miles, as I’m working on a story in which a young woman swims open water. I’ve a nearby salt water bay to swim across, and the novel’s character must save herself with an open salt water swim.

10. Confess your current obsession.

My friend Jo-Ann recommended Joyce Weatherford’s Heart of the Beast, which I had to scrounge around for. It’s wonderful and did not get the attention it deserved.

11. Is there an author or book series that you love, but no one else seems to know about?

Suzanne, crooned by Leonard Cohen; notions of the lyrics are embedded in Orchids and Stone.

Dorothea Brooke, with no apologies to those who decry some of her choices. She was intelligent and spirited and genuinely wanted to help those less fortunate. Ultimately, she marries for love. And she rides.

13. If you could be any literary character for a day, who would you be and why?

Bill Bryson, whose nonfiction is smart and funny and diverse.

14. If you could only read one author for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?

When I was a cop, I used to check occasionally to ensure I was still fairly anonymous. (Women in my family tend to marry guys with surnames like Johnson, Jones, and Smith; you’d think we’re going for Witness Protection-type disappearing.) Trail races and endurance rides that I enter now publicly post results, so after I became a full-time writer, I bowed to the reach of the Internet, and I enjoy connecting when readers reach out to me.

15. Do you Google yourself? Find anything interesting?

I’ll go kidnap baby Hitler and rehome him, maybe to a nice family with a cattle station in remote Australia, where he can work hard and not try to conquer the world with prejudice. Then I’ll be off to grab another little future despot.

16. You have a time machine. What’s your first stop?

My ashes will be flung from a favorite trail, but if I had a stone it would express gratitude. I’ve been able to lead a positive life, genuinely caring for others.

17. What would you like your epitaph to read?

If people would stop trying to choose for others, it might fix everything else. I recall the late Christopher Hitchens’s comment that there is a cure for poverty (and it seems if we cure poverty, we stop hunger), but I thought his cure (birth control) was incomplete because there are still constructs in many societies and sub-cultures in which one person inappropriately subordinates another, which results in poverty and unnecessary conflict.

18. You have the power to instantly fix one problem in the world. What do you do?

This was a pretty sweet interview. That said, it always works to ask me to go get a cup of coffee or get out on the trails, either on a good horse or in my running shoes, and talk about our favorite books